


spit-kissing on my sickbed

by ghosttits



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: heres some angst !, idk how to do tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-29
Updated: 2016-09-29
Packaged: 2018-08-18 13:32:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8163713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghosttits/pseuds/ghosttits
Summary: If she had actually eaten something in the past 24 hours she would think that she’s having some sort of allergic reaction, her throat’s so tight and burning. She can feel everyone’s eyes around the table boring into the sides of her head as she stares at the dining table, picking up the spoon Patty puts in front of her and automatically starting to slap spoonfuls of soup into her mouth, forcing herself to swallow at the same rate, hoping to be as fast as possible. Avoiding the stare of certain blonde.
Or the one where Erin has been forced to repress all her feeling her whole life.





	

“Mmm, mornin’, babe”, Holtzmann whispers against the skin of her shoulder in the dim light of the first rays of sunlight that have made it through the crack in between their curtains. 

Last night is a haze. A successful bust. A lot of booze. And Holtzmann. In her bed. 

Erins heart feels heavy along with her eyelids.

She gently lets a little sort-of-smile play at her lips at the petname, feeling uneasy, wiping the corner of her mouth on the pillow getting rid of some drool that had escaped her mouth during the night. She feels Holtzmanns arm tighten around her middle.

She feels a feather light kiss being pressed to the top of her spine. 

Panic starts to seep into her bones, filling her stomach, clouding her mind.

Erin sighs.

A few minutes of silence. 

“You don’t.. Uh.. Regret last night, do ya?” Holtzmann whispers after a couple of minutes of silence, Erin must have gotten noticeably tense, she thinks.. But _oh_ , so softly does Jillian whisper it.

Erin thinks she’s never actually heard her be this quiet, this… _vulnerable_. She’s afraid of her answer, Erin realizes. Erin’s afraid of her answer too, hell, she doesn’t even know if she has an answer, let alone if she’ll ever be able to open her mouth again and speak. She feels paralyzed and her stomach clenches as she let’s the silence drag on and on. 

She doesn’t know if it’s the hangover that closes up her throat, or the fact that she doesn’t have an answer to Holtzs question, or that she’s afraid because she might just have it.

Erin opens and closes her mouth a few times, gaping like a fish out of water.

It’s a couple of minutes until Holtzmann – Jillian, she told her to call her last night – gets up from the bed, taking what feels like all the warmth in the world with her. Erin immediately misses it. Misses her. She hears rustling clothes as Holtz gets dressed, the slamming of the door and then, silence. 

Loudest silence she’s ever heard.

Erin lays in the bed, only half covered in the duvet cover as Holtzmann had yanked it a bit with her when she rushed up and left. She feels cold. She feels so completely cold, down to her bones, up her spine, inside and out. 

She gets up and barely makes it to the bathroom until she throws up, choking back a sob.

 

 

She’s walking to the firehouse couple of hours and a long shower later, avoiding her own reflection on the shop windows.

Her head throbs from the hangover and from the thoughts she cannot bring herself to say to Holtz. 

“Hey!” Abby startles her. She only just entered the firehouse and it seems like Abby appeared from thin air.

“What’s wrong? Hungover, huh? Me and Patty got chinese last night when we got in, there’s still some left in the kitchen, should be perfectly fine if you heat it up. You definitely look like you need some food in ya,” Abby rambles on and on, speaking hundred miles a minute, as Erin starts to make her way to the shared kitchen.

Erin has gone back to being completely preoccupied by the whirlwind of her own thoughts –what to say, what to say, what to say–, she doesn’t even realize Abby has tailed her to the kitchen, still chatting, like Erin’s whole world hasn’t just been shifted in the past 10 hours.

“Where’d you and Holtzy disappear last night?” this question gets Erins attention. It’s completely innocent, completely normal to ask as they did leave the bar together, but Erin’s chest suddenly tightens in shame and sort-of-guilt and memories from last night fill up her mind. She’s always thought movies with graphic flashbacks had been complete bullshit and over the top, until now. 

Her mind fills with pictures of Holtzmanns pleasure-filled face on display beneath her eyelids when she lets her eyes close. She swears she can still feel the full lips softly kissing the hollow of her throat- 

Erin pulls herself from her thoughts.

She clears her throat, blinking violently, “Oh, uhm, I started to feel a bit sick, y’know, so Holtz took me home.. Helped me out..,” she squeaks out, throat raw.

Abby looks at her a bit suspiciously, but lets it go, “Alright, well, ya gotta get some won tons in ya –perfect ratio this time, too, Bennie’s really got his act together–, you’re weird when you’re hungover.”

Erin tries to laugh it off but her throat feels like sandpaper and she feels like she’s swallowing broken glass, so she heats up some soup and makes her way to her corner in the first floor, with her whiteboard and perfectly arranged desk.

She makes a mental effort not to glance up the staircase to the second floor – Holtzs floor. Her soup goes untouched as she tries to mute the loudness of her thoughts with the equations on the whiteboard.

 

 

It must’ve been several hours of numbing her mind with physics until the shame Erin felt before had been filling her stomach had turned into a dull ache of hunger. Patty had been by a couple of hours earlier when she got back from the library, telling she’d picked up some sandwiches from the place she loves but Erin had declined. 

She was scared to leave the bubble she’d created around herself in her corner of the downstairs office, a safe bubble filled with physics. She was scared of running into a certain blonde with dimples you could swim in, because she still doesn’t have the answer to her question. Does she.. regret it? Well, no, not really but... Is she scared? Yes. Very much so. Is she hungry? Affirmative.

She glances at her desk, staring down at the undoubtedly cold won ton soup. She frowns, and starts making her way towards the kitchen. 

She realizes she’s silently praying that everyone would’ve gone home already.

 

 

Her prayers had not been answered.

“Hey! Still alive! We were beginning to think ya had passed out in there,” Patty yells as Erin enters the kitchen, mortified to see all of her fellow ‘busters sitting around the kitchen table. 

Her lip trembles. 

Her hands get clammy. 

She tries to start out an answer, but ends up muttering something incoherent, while clutching her stomach. Great, she can’t even talk anymore, she has moved onto complete cave man sign language. Just excellent. 

Erin crosses the space to the kitchen counter and she thinks she can make out a certain blonde smirking in the corner of her eye. Erin looks at everywhere but her, and she can feel herself being childish and rude, she knows, she knows, _she knows._

But she can’t face her. 

“C’mon, sit down baby girl, you look like walkin’ dead, honey”

Erin starts to argue that she needs to go, she needs to go, she can’t stay, she rakes her mind for reasons she just cannot stay, her cat’s ill –she doesn’t have a cat and her friends know that–, she needs to go grocery shopping, _anything._ She’s not ready to face someone she knows she hurt today, in the worst way possible, no matter how stupidly Holtz is smirking at her right now, slamming Pringles into her mouth. 

Before Erin knows it, Patty has linked arms with her and is sitting her down right across from Holtz, and _oh god,_ Abby and Patty are gonna figure out that something is wrong, Erin cannot even look at Holtz, she can’t bring herself to own up to her actions, to face her, to act like a goddamn adult.

Why is she wired like this.

_Wrongly,_ her father always told her. Reminded her, as if she could ever forget.

If she had actually eaten something in the past 24 hours she would think that she’s having some sort of allergic reaction, her throat’s so tight and burning. She can feel everyone’s eyes around the table boring into the sides of her head as she stares at the dining table, picking up the spoon Patty puts in front of her and automatically starting to slap spoonfuls of soup into her mouth, forcing herself to swallow at the same rate, hoping to be as fast as possible. Avoiding the stare of certain blonde.

“Jeez, Erin, I’ve never seen you this hungover! What’d ya drink last night? Was it the bartenders special - God, Erin, we all said no to that, how did he convince you?” Abby’s chuckling at the state her friend’s in while Patty rubs gentle circles across her shoulder blades, and Holtzmann… 

Holtzmann’s just staring. Erin doesn’t need to look at her to know that, because she can feel it, she can feel those blue eyes boring into her skull, undoubtedly trying to reach her eyes, but Erin keeps her head down, like a dog in shame, Holtzmann thinks.

Finally, Holtzmann speaks up, “Yeah, Erin, what’d’ya get? Did you drink ‘Regret In The Mornin’? ‘Sex With Someone ‘N’ Shame’? ‘Fucking Someone Over’, which is my personal favorite, by the way” 

Erin whips her head up in a heartbeat and catches Holtzmanns back as she walks out of the kitchen. 

“Erin..?” Patty whispers carefully, eyes wide, “Uhh, what was that about?”

“Nothing,” the physicist shakes her head as she gets up and goes after Holtzmann, leaving the two other ghostbusters looking at each other confused.

 

 

Erin marches into the lab with a sudden surge of adrenaline, Holtzs words fired up something inside of her and suddenly she’s as confident as she’ll ever be.

“Oh, lookie who came by, you can finally look at me?” Holtzs voice is sharp and ruthless from behind the trash cluttered desk, blue eyes more piercing than Erin has ever seen them.

“Wh-... Why did you have to say those things in front of Patty and Abby-” Erins starts but Holtz cuts her off with a laugh. 

It’s not like her laugh usually though, no, this laugh doesn’t make her dimples pop as much as her regular laugh, this laugh doesn’t make Erins stomach flutter with butterflies, like it did last night. Like it has done for a while now.

“Fuck you, Erin,” she spits out. 

Erins head is spinning.

“You know,” Holtz starts again before Erin can even sort out her thoughts, “I’ve been someones experiment before. I’ve been used and I’ve allowed it and I’ve forgiven it… In fucking college. In college that was fucking whatever, like sure everyone experiments and I was happy to help other people figure out their sexuality, but now? You’re fucking forty, Erin. And I’m almost thirty, and I’ve done the experimenting, my fix was full by the time I graduated college. I was done being fucked over a long time ago,” Holtz takes a breath.

Erin thinks she’s trying to calm herself down, but before Erin can even get her thoughts in order, Holtz keeps going.

“And maybe I should’ve mentioned that to you last night. But I didn’t and partly, yeah, it’s my fault for thinking you had the courtesy of treating me like a human being,” another mirthless chuckle. 

“Like I mattered. But apparently not.” 

Erin feels like she might vomit again and this time it’s not just her throat that’s burning, her eyes are burning with tears and she’s ashamed, so fucking ashamed. 

And she wishes she’d opened up her mouth earlier, hours earlier, back when they were still there in the bed, so blissfully. Peacefully.

“I–,” When she starts out now, it’s too late and Holtzmann interrupts her, “I really don’t wanna hear it, Erin”

She struggles saying her name and Erin forces herself to look at Holtz, through the shame, and she’s shocked to see that her cheeks are as red as her eyes are rimmed with the color. The color that is simultaneously the color of love and pain. _Oh, sweet ol’ irony,_ she thinks. 

Erin knows that the conversation is over. 

She walks away.

 

 

The days go by, Erin and Holtz both avoid each other and it’s driving Abby and Patty mad. Patty even brings up the idea of locking them both in a room just so they “could sort their shit out” as she puts it. 

Busts come and go, they haven’t had anything major in weeks now. They’ve taken up to teaming in pairs during busts that require all of them present - where Holtzmann used to have Erins back, there’s now Abby. Erin tries not to feel disappointed every time she glances behind her, finding someone else instead of Holtzmann. 

“Thanks, Abby”

“Thanks, Patty”

It’s always taken an effort to get Holtzmann to come down from the lab when she’s in the middle of an invention, but these days it’s nearly impossible. She’s only come down two times a day in the past week, Abby’s been counting. She comes down at 8 a.m every morning to get some coffee and at 8 p.m every night to grab some food when Patty calls her up the stairs, threatening to come and get her by her suspenders if she doesn’t come by herself. She never eats downstairs anymore. She never sees Erin.

Erin has completely holed herself up in her corner of the office, filling up her whiteboard, wiping it all away, filling it up again and wiping it down. Again and again. She only puts her marker down when sleep takes over. She’s taken to sleeping on a shitty travel mattress on the floor of the office. Patty and Abby try to convince her to go home the first few days it happens, but Erin stays every night. She starts to feel the pain in her back and neck after a few nights on the mattress but she still refuses to go home. She has deserved that pain. Actually, she has deserved a whole lot more, but this will do for now. She hurt someone, she should be hurt in return. 

A back pain for a heartache doesn’t really seem like a fair trade (but her heart aches too).

 

 

It’s nearly one a.m when she hears something getting knocked over in the hall. Her heart starts thumping immediately as she puts down her marker and reaches for her gear, panicking, because she knows she’s the only one at the firehouse this late. Abby and Patty said goodbye to her hours ago on their way out.

Erin stalks out in the hall, the light from the office illuminating the hall in a dim light and she can barely make out the two people at the end of the hall. 

Familiar mess of blonde hair. 

She thinks she can feel her heart stop. Physically, she thinks her heart stopped. 

_Flatline._

There’s Holtz –Jillian,– kissing the neck of a taller brunette, sighs escaping her mouth, and Erin tears her eyes away blinking through the tears blurring her vision, she needs to get the hell out of here. 

Crashing sound. 

“Shit,” she mutters, she knocked over a fucking lamp.

Audible “shit” was also heard from the other end of the hallway as Holtz jumps, detaching her lips from the neck of the stranger, facing Erin.

“Like what ya see?”

Erin looks at her disbelievingly. “Fuck you,” escapes out of her mouth before she can stop it.

The same mirthless laugh she heard two weeks ago. 

“You did. Can’t escape it, Erin. Cause you did. Fuck me, that is.”

Erin turns to walk away. Holtzmann’s clearly drunk, slurring, she does want to have a conversation with the blonde but not when she’s in this state.

“Yeah, walk away, Erin! Show’s over, ladies and gentlemen, and it ended like it always does, whoever bet that she’d walk away again is going home with a fortune!”

Erin slams the hall door, making her way to the kitchen, putting the kettle on and she thinks her blood is boiling as much as the water.

She hears the front door open and close. Silence.

A strong hand on her shoulder. The kettle boiling slows to a lull. 

She’s being turned around.

“Fuck you, Erin Gilbert,” spat at her face. Venom, from those lips that once worshipped her.

“You’re drunk-”

“You were drunk too! That- that night.. Was that why you slept with me? Drunk Erin, needy, drunk Erin, had to fuck the first person she saw.. Was that it? You fucked me just ‘cause I was there? If Kevin had been there that night, would’ya have slept with him? Erin,” her voice breaks.

“You have to give me something. Anything. To either make me hate your fucking guts or to forgive you.. But, I need.. Something.”

Erin looked at the tears spilling from eyes she had gotten so used to see lit up when she smiled- oh, her smile - up until two weeks ago. 

Racked sobs from the lungs of which two weeks ago sighed in pleasure on her skin, in and out, breathed in her scent, made her feel.. Loved.

Shy, trembling hands wrap around Holtzmanns face, her puffed cheeks. Then arms, around her neck, grabbing the T-shirt she’s wearing. A nose, finding the crook of the engineers neck, inhaling there.

She’s careful, though, she doesn’t wanna break. Not anymore. 

“I hate you,” Erin doesn’t let go.

“I fucking hate you,” Erin closes her eyes.

Holtzmanns arms stay still, hanging around her hips. She’s shaking. Erin thinks its from anger, until she feels teardrops falling on her collarbones, wetting her chest. 

“I’m sorry,” Erin breathes out.

“That’s not enough”

“I know” 

“Give me more” It’s barely a whisper.

Erin untangles her arms from around Holtzmanns neck and searches for her eyes. “I want to.”

 

 

It’s Sunday. Abby and Patty aren’t coming in today and she doubts Holtzmann will be coming in today either. Erin is sitting alone in the kitchen enjoying her morning coffee, for the first time in two weeks she doesn’t have to be wary. She thinks back to her teenage years, one - unpleasant - memory in particular. 

_She’d just gotten out of her first physics class of the semester. The classes starting made her feel uneasy, it seemed like everyone already had friends, probably because they were living in student accommodation and instead of living in a dorm herself, her parents had rented her a sensible apartment right outside of campus, just a five minute walk away. She had tried to argue with her parents to not get the apartment, that she’d be fine with staying in dorms like everyone else. Oh, was that the wrong thing to say. After that, her father went on and on about her going to college to get an education, not to mingle._

_Erin let it go after that. There was never any use trying to fight her father, he always got his way._

_One night she was walking back to her apartment after a night meeting with her physics group, working on their project. After they were done, they’d asked her to come to a close by bar for a drink or two, but she declined, her fathers words echoing her mind, reminding her of what was important._

_It was hard to say no, though. These people, classmates, seemed to genuinely like her, which was a new thing to her._

_No calling her ‘ghost girl’._

_No bullying, none at all._

_These people didn’t know anything about her previous life back in Michigan taunted by bullies ever since everyone found out about the ghost and the therapy… She was just Erin. Erin, who had her own apartment, oh! And had her classmates been impressed when she let that little piece of information slip out! She didn’t think she’d ever impressed anyone in her old school, maybe in her life. Not her father certainly._

_With a sudden surge of rebellion, she turned around and walked back towards the school, past it and to the closest bar she assumed her classmates had meant._

_That’s the first night she ever got drunk._

_The only thing she really remembers from that night is people buying her drink after drink when they heard she’d never drunk before. And then she remembers kissing._

_Very soft lips._

_Melina, the gorgeous - and smart, mind you - brunette from her group who Erin thought was really shy. Turned out she wasn’t._

_She woke up in a strange room. A dorm room, she realized after blinking blearily a few times. A mess of soft dark her next to her._

_Naked bodies under covers._

_Panic, panic, panic._

_Erin avoided her parents’ calls for three weeks after that night._

_They called her every Tuesday night and Saturday morning, but she always cut it short with excuses of having to study for a math quiz and oh, she also had a big physics exam, and sorry Mom, I gotta run to the library._

_Erin could escape her parents - barely, - but she could. She couldn’t escape herself, though, her own thoughts. She’d been raised very religiously, like mass on every Sunday religiously. She’d been a Christian since birth and through her parents that had become a part of her identity but. She liked kissing Melina. She liked the softness of Melinas hair in her fingertips, the gentle curve of her hip.. Her plump lips. She liked it._

_She called her mom sobbing one night. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, she kept whispering but her mother was silent, Erin couldn’t even hear her breathing, she was wondering if she was even there._

_Her parents pulled her from school the next day and moved her back to Michigan._

_Back to being a ghost girl, she got late admission to the University of Michigan, because if there was one thing she was good at, it was physics. She never saw Melina again, nor did she ever let her parents catch her even glancing at another girl again._

_After a while, she wouldn’t even let herself do it anymore. She convinced herself not to do it anymore. Willed herself. Never again._

_Never. Again._

Until it did happen again, Erin thought, bitterly smiling at the irony. 

“What’s so funny?” came a familiar voice from the doorway, causing Erin to spill her coffee.

“Shit,” Erin hisses, grabbing a napkin and trying to dry her pajama shirt. “You startled me,” she mutters.

“Sorry”

“It’s fine”

Holtzmann walks swiftly past her and grabs a carton of orange juice from the fridge, not bothering with a glass, she takes a swig straight out of the carton. She catches Erin scrunching her nose.

“Somethin’ wrong?” she challenges.

“No, no” Erin answers quickly. You don’t wanna poke an already angry bear, taught her father. Fuck him, but it was sound advice. But fuck him.

“‘s what I thought”

Holtzmann starts to make her way out of the kitchen, leaving Erin alone again, which a minute ago she didn’t mind, but now she can’t stand the thought of having to spend a minute alone with her thoughts. 

“Jillian,” the last time she called her by her first name was that night. The night.

Holtzmann stops. Doesn’t turn around. But stops. And that’s better than nothing.

“I slept with a girl when I was 19 and my parents never looked at me the same again and they made me hate myself for it,” she lets out, all in one breath. 

Thump, thump, thump.

Blood rushing in her ears, if Holtzmann answers Erin doesn’t hear it. She’s never told that to anyone after she told her mother. 

_I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, mom._

“Erin?” she feels Holtzs hand on her arm, “Hey, come back to me,” she murmurs softly, her face suddenly so close. Erin feels light headed and she’s not sure if it’s because she can’t breathe or because of the sudden closeness of Holtzmann.

“I’m-” Erin chokes out. “I’m so sorry”

Small, callused fingers drawing soft circles on her forearm.

Choked back sobs in her room in the middle of the night, back in Michigan because she was wired wrong, she’s an anomaly.

Whispers of why me, why always me, when she hears her father calling the headmaster downstairs telling him she won’t be attending there anymore. 

_Yes, everything is fine, Erin just needed to come back home. Yes. Thank you. Goodbye._

Strong arms wrapping around her neck, pulling her close. Whispered words of comfort. 

_Your parents were wrong Erin, they were wrong. Not you. Not me. Them._

“Oh, god,” Erins tears are flowing freely now, she’s clinging to the smaller woman, letting her surround her, she wants to desperately climb inside of her, rest in her lungs, along the curve of her spine, inside her heart.

And what Holtzmann is thinking she won’t say. Not for awhile, not until Erin is ready to hear it. 

But she feels it, _oh,_ does she feel it.

And she hopes Erin does too.


End file.
